City's Poets Take Center Stage

Poetry is on an unexpected uptick in New York with events at the Nuyorican Poets Café, the Bowery Poetry Cub, Duane Park and McNally Jackson Books.

Updated Aug. 28, 2013 10:09 p.m. ET

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Bob Holman, poet, founder and artistic director of the Bowery Poetry Club, and singer Louisa Bradshaw perform on stage at the newly renovated venue on Sunday, August 25. Poetry is on an unexpected uptick in New York.
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The Bowery Poetry Club has returned from a yearlong hiatus, holding readings and other events on Sundays. Shown here, musical group Timbila performs African music for the crowd which also enjoyed a reading of English and Welsh poetry.
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Corey Wrinn, center, 18, a freshman at the New School, lines up outside of the Nuyorican Poets Café in the East Village before the start of a recent open mic night. As the café celebrates its 40th anniversary, it has announced $5.3 million in municipal grants that will allow it to renovate its three upper floors.
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Nisha Asnani hosts a recent open mic night at the Nuyorican. McNally Jackson Books, in SoHo, on Sept. 17 debuts a five-part reading series with the Poetry Society of America. 'In 40 years I've never seen it so vibrant here,' said Alice Quinn, the society's executive director and a former poetry editor at the New Yorker.
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Alia Calderone recites a spoken-word poem at the Nuyorican. Nuyorican and Bowery are jointly celebrating in October the 20th anniversary of Aloud, an anthology of Nuyorican poetry edited by Mr. Holman.
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Mike Larry Draw recites a spoken-word poem at the Nuyorican. Mr. Holman is producing and hosting a documentary on endangered languages for PBS, and his club is debuting 'Unheard Of,' a 10-part series dedicated to poems in such tongues, starting with a Sept. 29 showcase of poems in five endangered Indonesian languages.
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Anna Marie S. reads a poem at the Nuyorican. 'There's all this experimentation and riffing now. It's liberating,' said Poetry Society's Ms. Quinn. 'The city is so work-driven, but it's such an intense adventure.'
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Hibiki, of the band Willthebeest, performs. The poetry scene does have its internal critics. 'Poetry has its heart in the right place, which you can't say of most art. But the majority of the scene here is the MFA crowd,' said Alex Dimitrov, the content editor for the Academy of American Poets, and himself the founder of Wilde Boys, a roving gay poetry salon (Mr. Dimitrov has an MFA).
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Kam Potts, left, performs at the Nuyorican. 'The way you prove you're serious," continued Mr. Dimitrov, 'is you commit and stick around.'
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